Resource

Stellarium

Open Source planetarium for your computer

Stellarium is a free, open source planetarium for your computer that shows a realistic sky in 3D. Stellarium is free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time with openGL. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope. It is being used in real planetarium projectors, too. Just set your coordinates and go. It is also customizable.

Some features:

* very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
* equatorial and azimuthal grids visualization
* eclipse simulation
* skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection
* default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
* extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
* asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
* constellations for twelve different cultures
* images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
* realistic Milky Way
* the planets and their satellite